The cryptocurrency world is now rife with scams, get rich quick schemes, and promises of immense returns. I realize most of us know better, but the people now entering the cryptosphere more than likely don't. In this series, I hope to warn people off of specific sites and trends before they ever make the mistake of transferring crypto or fiat there.
Does anyone remember, in ancient, pre-Bcash, pre-Segwit2 times, the Bitcoin Unlimited proposal? It was a forthcoming fork that promised to solve some of the problems that the Lightning Network and various new BTC forks proposed to eliminate. So, sounded like a possible opportunity, right?
HitBTC, I found out, as the only site offering Bitcoin Unlimited. You know the importance of getting in a new crypto early on. It might have been a long shot, but there seemed to be no real harm in throwing a little BTC behind it. So I got an account and sent, I believe, .1 BTC (now $2000) to it, and bought the equivalent in BTU.
Then I watched it rapidly tank to .01 in value before I dumped it.
Oh, well. That's the way things go sometimes, right?
Except... there was no BTU. And what I bought was not actually BTU. It was...nothing. A future promise for BTU, if it happened. But nowhere on the site did it indicate that. To this day, I'm amazed they are still in business, and I heard no real outcry from the community, no statements condemning them from the Core developers. Just a huge scam.
So, if you Google HitBTC, you can find a plethora of horror stories regarding them. Needless to say, any site that would perpetuate a scam of this nature should be avoided at all costs. They are definitely people I would punch in the face.
The fault is mine, ultimately. While the crypto market does move fast, and timing/early adoption is the key to successful investing, if you can't take a few hours or days to fully investigate what you're getting into, you can and should expect to be burned a few times.
But this is ancient history in the fast-paced crypto world. Which is why newcomers to the realm need to know to avoid the entirely unscrupulous HitBTC at all costs.